PRESCRIPT:
After 3 tries I have finally done away with the repetition. I are fail at HTML.
Why hello there everyone~
It's been slightly longer than usual, my apologies. I've not been wildly busy, just slightly more sociable. My friends from uni have arrived in Japanland and we've been delightfully touristic, leaving less time for posting. But pictures speak louder than whispers - warning, 200 million photos ahead.
Night at the arcade with Seita:
"Stimulating"...
Hostel banter:
French Maid Cafe (Alice from uni):
GIANT GLOWING CUBE THAT GAVE YOU DRAGONBALL Z POWERS WHEN YOU TOUCHED IT:
Pretty night time Tokyo
? ... !
\(^0^)/
+ Nicola and Chloe
There's a fair bit to digest there, but I regret nothing! Give me barely categorized masses of photos or give me death.
Yesterday I went to the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.
I'm still acquiring a taste for visual art. Not making any of my own, and not really having much experience with of context for it, I find it quite difficult to understand it, or more importantly, emotionally engage with it. But I'm getting there, and I thought a lot of the stuff at the museum was quite special.
The museum organized works into rooms divided by the conventional periodisation of Japanese modern history. The rooms I most enjoyed were those for the Taisho and pre-war Showa periods (the 1910s through the early 30s) - the same time frame as my modernist literary interest. It's work that was very influenced by international trends like surrealism and abstract art. Its all very progressive and individualistic, a creative flurry before the repressive war years. I find it a shame that Japanese art (including literature) is rarely looked at in an international context and indeed, that international studies of art movements too rarely look at Japan. It's the same patronising story that Japanese artists should know their place and not try to "imitate" Western Art.
Here are a few of my favorite pieces that I was allowed to photo, tell me what you think: hopelessly derivative or you know, quite good?
Kishida Ryusei:
Sea by Koga Harue
The Moon and Flowers by Koga Harue
The Quietest Time by Kitawaki Noburo
A section from Circus by somebody who's name escapes me~
I went back to Yasukuni Shrine today.
But before I get into that; I managed to find grass today!
No, not marijuana. Grass. The grassy stuff. A poster near the shrine advertised Ninomaru park in the Imperial Palace complex, and it showed people sitting down on grass. Looking at a map of Tokyo, one might almost think it was quite a green city. It's not. Maps all around the city show green spaces, but the qualification for this seems to be to have the word 'park' in your name. Some of the more honest green patches on maps correlate to a reality that looks like this:
You can look at green things, but no sitting, no touching. Other green patches - such as the one in Akihabara - are concrete spaces with benches and surrounding hedges.
This has the consequence of making Japan feel floaty, rather literally ungrounded. I'm English. As a socialist I denounce nationalism as a distraction, a tool to turn the working classes against each other. But fuck it, our is a green and pleasant land, and nothing is nicer to this urban dweller than sitting and reading on grass.
This may be the first time in the four years I've been to Japan where I have found a patch of natural green ground that I can sit down, lie down, max and relax on. The green of Japan is all rice paddy, forest and in small parts touristic garden: it is for harvest, logging and taking photos of.
Absolutely spiffing:
You know what, I was going to talk about Japanese historical revisionism - aren't you the lucky ones - but I may make like a Guardian journalist and back off on the polemic for one post.
So to leave you with a Japanesey taste in your mouth: what did I find on the way to the park? Vamps? VAMPS!
...
Vamps are apparently these guys:
Their fans are definitely these guys:
They were dressed in black in pink and sometimes as cats or something. There were thousands, and they were politely lined up outside a festival hall.
